WhatsApp hits record high of 18 billion processed messages on NY’s eve

Whether you sport an Android smartphone or devices from other camps — even RIM’s BlackBerry — chances are you have WhatsApp Messenger installed to communicate with friends and family members, as well as sending the odd pictures and video.

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There’s no doubt that the multi-platform messaging app is more widely used than ever now, but if you’re wondering just how popular it has become – look no further than the stats that the developer has shared on Twitter.

On December 31st, over 7 billion inbound messages were processed by the company, while the outbound messages reached 11 billion. The combined 18 billion messages set a new record for WhatsApp, beating the one-day record of 10 billion messages that its users received and sent in August.

On Dec 31st we had a new record day: 7B msgs inbound, 11B msgs outbound = 18 billion total messages processed in one day! Happy 2013!!!

Meanwhile, things aren’t looking so hot for our dear old friend SMS. Having celebrated its 20th birthday last December, the traditional text messaging service suffered its first ever quarterly drop in Q3 in the U.S., according to a study done by Chetan Sharma. The average number of sent messages per month in Q3 2012 was 678 texts, down from 696 text messages recorded in the previous quarter.

Granted, we’re not going to see SMS disappearing anytime soon, but it’s clear that its heyday is behind it.

Let’s do our own little survey here. Do you still send text messages the old-fashioned way every day or is it WhatsApp — or any other similar services – all the way for you?